Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Another presidential assault on science as fires and pandemic rage

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/15/politics/donald-trump-science-california-wildfires-coronavirus/index.html

 A defining trait of Donald Trump's presidency is his incessant destruction of reason, evidence and science in the service of his personal whims, conspiratorial mindset and political requirements.

On a day when Democratic nominee Joe Biden branded him a "climate arsonist" and global warming burst to the center of the campaign, Trump again ditched research and data for his own wild hunches and odd theories about California's wildfires. And his counter-factual tendencies, which are responsible for widespread harm but are nevertheless embraced by supporters as germane to Trump's political brand, were at work on multiple fronts Monday with America under assault from concurrent crises.

 When another local official told Trump it was time to take "our head out of the sand" by relying on the forest management excuse, the President pounced.

"It'll start getting cooler. You just watch," Trump responded.
"I wish science agreed with you," the official replied.
"I don't think science knows, actually," Trump said, closing the official down.
The exchange was a flagrant example of how the President simply dismisses any information that does not fit his preconceived idea of a problem. While many of Trump's opinions do seem uninformed and not shaped by the almost limitless resources of the federal government, there is also a clear political motivation underscoring his responses.

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